Friday, May 17, 2013

More proof that Tunisian Salafists hate all Jews

This video was shot a few days ago in the Tunisian tourist resort of Sousse. It shows Tunisian Salafists smashing bottles of alcohol. About two minutes into the clip, the Salafists are shouting down their favourite bogeyman - the Jews.

Mark their words. You can clearly hear the Arabic 'al Yahud'. Are demonstrators railing at Israel, or are they shouting, ' Down with the Jews, but not Tunisian Jews' ? No.

When it comes to purveying the 'demon drink', the worst offenders, in these Islamists' eyes, are in fact Tunisian Jews. After all, they originated the famousBoukha - or fig brandy.

Tell that to Ahmed Maher of the BBC. Recently a reader received a BBC reply to her complaint relating to Ahmed Maher’s claim in a BBC website news piece:

The reader provided four video clips in support of the complaint – viewable here, here, here and here.

The mind-boggling reply she received could have come straight of Alice in Wonderland:

“We have reviewed Ahmed Maher’s article “Tunisia’s last Jews at ease despite troubled past”, and discussed your complaint with him.
Regarding the You Tube links, Mr Maher reaffirms that he conducted an extensive search in Arabic and English to find clips or links of Salafists or hardliners attacking “Tunisian Jews” – a specification he makes clear in his piece.

"He found clips of rallies in support of Osama Bin Laden, but stresses he did not find anything attacking “Tunisian Jews” specifically (my emphasis - ed) .
Mr Maher says: “The chants heard in the four links cited [in your complaint] are against ‘the State of Israel and Jews but not Tunisian Jews’.

"The chants were echoed across several Muslim countries in the past two years in the wake of the Arab spring (and even before the revolutions) by extremists (even lay people and leftists in Egypt in particular who attacked the headquarters of the Israeli embassy in Giza in August 2011) to protest what they term ‘the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the blockade of the Gaza strip’.

"They chanted it in Tunisia during the visit of the Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah. Again, the chants, which are in Arabic, were not directed at ‘Tunisian Jews’ but ‘Israel’ in general.

“I spoke to Sheikh Bashir Bin Hassan, one of the most prominent Salafi, Wahabi sheikhs in post-revolution Tunisian, and asked him again about two things: the chants and the protest in front of the Tunis synagogue. He said: ‘The chants were not aimed at the Tunisian Jews; make no mistake. It was directed at Israel because Israel is a very sensitive issue in the Muslim world. Our Prophet Muhammad asked us to take good care and protect non-Muslims living in our countries like Christians and Jews.’

"Get it?" says the excellentBBC Watch blog." According to the BBC, if Tunisian Islamists (and presumably any elsewhere too) chant “Killing the Jews is a duty” or “Khaybar, Khaybar ya Yahud” or ”the army of Mohammed will return”, then local Jews have nothing whatsoever to worry about because in fact they are not referring to them – or indeed to Jews at all – but to Israel, which should apparently be perfectly understandable.

"And the BBC website’s Middle East desk is quite sure of that because a prominent Salafist – who obviously thinks it unremarkable to chant hate speech relating to “the Zionist entity’s policies” in front of a synagogue in Tunisia – told them so.

BBC Watch concludes:

" If that is the level of understanding and interpretation prevalent among staff at the BBC’s Middle East desk, then the only conclusion can be that the licence fee payer is funding an outfit not fit for purpose."

No doubt the BBC would also rubbish the latest video (above ) from Sousse.

As for Mr Maher's playing down 'exaggerated' media reports of Tunisian antisemitism, he maintains that all the Tunisian Jews he interviewed told him, "we are fed up" :

"I have not put words into their mouths, neither did I push them to speak on this angle. There is no question about that.”

3 comments:

I used to admire the BBC!!!I do believe the name MAHER originates in an Arab country wheras MAYER is JewishWe must not forget the extreme love of Arabs on the part of the British.Their hero is Laurance of ArabiaShabat Shalomsultana

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)